“Get down on your knees. Lace your hands behind your head.”
He lowered himself down, a series of ungainly motions, a fat, scared, graceless man trying to move unthreateningly. Down on his knees Mr. Newell risked a longing glance at his desk, at the panic button, at the telephone. He knew that he was dead. He had known for all his life in that dire, dark, late-night-fearful part of his bourgeois brain that this moment was coming, was always coming. This was the terror that was the underside of mastery. He worked in a multimillion-dollar company, economy as big as Rhode Island, built on the backs of black people kept in cages, and so there had to be a reason they were in cages—it couldn’t just be because their suffering sowed the cottonseeds and ran the bundling machines; how could it be so? It had to be because under their skin, under the smiles GGSI had painted on their faces, they were monsters.
Now here, at last, the moment had come. I stared down at him, just me, no weapon in my hand, and he literally trembled, his moon cheeks and the thickness of his neck quivering.
“Listen, Matt,” I said, calm as calm could be. “What does FWH mean?”
Newell blinked. “What?”
He was sweating; a heavy sweat on his forehead like a glaze. Martha looked from him to me, from me to him.
“FWH,” I said. “It’s an abbreviation. From your roster of contract drivers. Please tell me what it means.”
“It’s—that’s…it’s Free White Housing.” His voice quivering like a ribbon. “That’s—our white people. They live here…FWH just means—that’s where they live.”
He was here. The truck driver. Working white. William Fucking Smith lived here.
I got down closer to Mr. Newell, down on my heels. I made my eyes wide and clenched my teeth. I was not going to kill Matty Newell, but his fear was of value. I used it as a gun, as a hundred-dollar bill, as the bent end of a paper clip to spring open a lock.
“FWH nine,” I said. “B eight.”
“Free White Housing area nine. Unit B eight. It’s…it’s like—an apartment complex. I don’t know.”
“Any reason a slave would go there?”
“Go—where?”
“To Free White Housing.”
“Yes. I mean, yes. Not—not usually, but yes. Niggers—I’m sorry. I’m sorry, sir. Slaves—I’m sorry…black persons…I’m sorry. Oh, Lord.” He licked his lips. Snot ran from his nose. When Matty Newell told this story later, he’d say I had a shotgun, at least. Machine gun, maybe. Martha with a pistol in each hand. The both of us dripping with knives.
“Slaves go there? It’s not unusual?”
“It’s not.”
Okay. Okay. I had what I needed, almost. The music had kicked up again, tightening my chest. There was a sickening feeling of excitement getting going in me as I realized what was going to happen. What I was going to have to do. The man was here. William Smith. He was here. I pulled open the top drawer of Newell’s desk and started to rifle through it, thinking quickly. “Okay.”
“What…” said Mr. Newell. “What are you doing?”
“Stay there, man. Stay.” He stayed down on his knees, his hands behind his head.
Mr. Newell looked to Martha, but she did not even see. She was at the desk now: she had found the page I had been looking at. She was staring at the screen. Oh, Martha.
I took the scissors out of Newell’s desk, and his eyes bulged. “No,” he said, his voice rising. Waddling backwards on his haunches, hands behind his head, repeating his refrain, “I never did any harm to any Negro person.”
“Quiet, please.”
I was unbuttoning my shirt. I was stepping out of my shoes. I held the scissors in my right hand and pointed at Newell with them. “How do I get to Free White Housing area nine?”
He told me what I needed to know. While he was talking I turned the scissors to my neck and began to carve, bringing up a deep well of blood, hacking away. Right where I had my inked-in tattoo, right at the root of my neck. I needed blood. I needed a fresh wound. You had to be very sick, puking and shitting sick, to be brought to a doctor’s attention around here, that I knew. A bad cut, though, was not the end of the world. Steroid shot and a bandage, you’re on your way.
“Martha,” I said, “there’s a first-aid kit on the bottom shelf over there. Can you get me some gauze, please?”
She was still at the computer. Transfixed by the screen. Martha was not watching us anymore. Her attention was wholly on that computer screen, where Samson’s face and fate were still displayed. She had taken a step forward; she had reached her hand halfway up toward the screen, a small gesture full of grief.